RIVERSIDE: Fairmount Park golf course temporarily closed

The public golf course at Fairmount Park closed Thursday, Jan. 17, and the city was on the verge of evicting its hired operator after he failed to pay rent for six months, city officials said.

The nine-hole course, which some golfers say is in shambles, will be shuttered for two to three months while the city renovates the course and driving range. After that, the city parks department will re-open the course and run it on a trial basis for a year, Parks Director Ralph Nuñez said.

“I would just like to reassure the community that the golf course will remain open (in the future) and we’re going to do everything we’ve done with all of our other facilities to ensure that it’s a nice experience for people using the course,” Nuñez said.

That should be a relief to Leo Hawel, president of the Fairmount Park Men’s Golf Club, who said his club has lost members in the past few years and had trouble enrolling new ones.

“It wasn’t (because of) anything other than poor management of the golf course,” he said.

The city’s contract was with Fairmount Golf Partners LLC. Kwang B. Kim, listed as the company contact on the California Secretary of State’s website, could not be located for comment Thursday.

The city obtained a judgment in Riverside County Superior Court on Jan. 2 that Fairmount Golf Partners owes the city $35,511 in back rent and penalties, according to a document provided by the city.

No company representatives showed up for the hearing. The city was moving to evict the operator and Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies set to lock the doors Friday, Jan. 18, but the operator did not show up Thursday, city officials said.

Hawel wonders why the situation wasn’t addressed sooner. He said he began complaining to the city about the course’s poor condition and problems with its management in November 2010, but other than a few meetings with city officials, he doesn’t think anything was done.

Hawel said he requested a copy of the city’s agreement with Fairmount Golf Partners, which showed the city had discounted the rent and intended the operator use that money toward upgrading the course.

“When I got the contract, I saw there were all these improvements that were supposed to be made and hardly any of them were done,” Hawel said.

Two city officials gave differing accounts of the terms of the operator’s contract and whether they were being met.

Nuñez said the operator was supposed to install a new irrigation system and didn’t, and the course is not well groomed, with tree stumps that should be removed and trees that need trimming.

But Councilman Mike Gardner, whose ward includes Fairmount Park, said he thinks the course’s condition has improved in the past five years. He wasn’t aware the city had concerns about the course’s maintenance.

Gardner said that, though he hasn’t read the contract, he thinks the rent was lowered at some point, but Nuñez said that, to his knowledge, that was not done.

Gardner and Nuñez noted that the course has remained popular with golfers, and they’re committed to seeing it reopen. If the parks department is successful with the course it will stay in charge, they said. If it’s not, the city could look for a new operator.

Hawel said he and his club previously offered to form a nonprofit group to run the course, and they’d still be willing to step up “because we’re passionate about golf and we would like to make this experiment work.”

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